Bosnia Press Review - November 30, 2010

EU candidate status in five years. Karadzic denies war-time expulsions of Bosniaks and Croats. Turkey pressured Bosniak official to stop using the word “genocide” in relation to Serbia.

Sabina Arslanagic

Sarajevo

OSLOBODJENJE

The international community’s High Representative in Bosnia Valentin Inzko said on Monday that the country would get EU candidate status in four to five years. “People here always felt like Europeans, although Bosnia-Herzegovina is not a member of the EU, you are Europeans,” Inzko said during a visit to the central town of Vitez.

DNEVNI AVAZ

Radovan Karadzic denied on Monday that Bosnian Serb forces had expelled Bosniak and Croat civilians from the Sarajevo suburb of Grbavica during the 1992-95 war. However, a protected witness who testified at the trial and who was a member of the Bosnian Serb army in Grbavica during the war, said Karadzic was not telling truth and that he personally saw people being expelled and mistreated.

NEZAVISNE NOVINE

US diplomatic cables published by whistle-blower web site WikiLeaks on Monday show that US and Turkish officials pressured former member of Bosnia’s presidency, Haris Silajdzic, to tone down his rhetoric and stop using the word “genocide” in relation to Serbs.

Balkan Insight has not verified the facts in the original press reports and cannot vouch for their accuracy.